Tuesday, January 18, 2011

A bill filed this morning by Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Little Rock, would prohibit the sale of blunt wraps, defined in SB 46 as "an individual tobacco wrapper, also known as a wrap or roll-your-own-cigar wrap, that is made wholly or in part from tobacco, including reconstituted tobacco, whether in the form of a tobacco leaf, sheet, or tube, and that is designed to be sold to individuals." With prisons overflowing, it seems like a good time to rethink our state's drug policy or maybe even consider legalizing, at least the medical use of, marijuana. Now we're talking about outlawing something you might use to roll the stuff into.

UPDATE: Sen. Hutchinson calls in with some comments regarding the bill. First of all, he wanted to point out that this would be a misdemeanor. "I wanted to make sure we didn't send anybody to prison over this." He went on to say:

There’s a question out there over whether or not these blunt wraps are legal to bring into the United States. Some courts have ruled them to be drug paraphernalia and some have not. This is really clarifying, for Arkansas’s purposes, so that’s how the bill is addressed.

If someone wants to smoke pot, there’s a thousand other ways to do it without a blunt wrap. This is just clarifying that this is drug paraphernalia. I don’t know of any legitimate commercial use of blunt wraps. People don’t roll their own cigars. It’s really more of a clarification, I’m not trying to criminalize anything. I’m probably going to support the governor’s bill to keep drug users out of prison.

Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys may have found an exit strategy for the growing controversy over player protests of racial inequities and Donald Trump's boorishness.

Diane Ravitch, a powerful voice against the billionaires trying to replace an egalitarian public education system with a fractured system of winners and losers segregated by race and income in private or privately operated schools, is giving a shoutout to Barclay Key of Little Rock for his review of Little Rock 60 years after the school crisis.

In which I fix an overlooked speaker in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's coverage of the observance of the 60th anniversary of Central High School desegregation

More evidence in the Washington Post that voter ID laws suppress votes, particularly among groups likely to vote Democratic. And the evidence is from Wisconsin, where a microscopic victory gave Donald Trump that state's electoral votes.

HempStaff's four-hour course is designed to prepare participants for work in a medical marijuana dispensary so that business owners are getting educated and well-prepared candidates when they start to fill new positions.